Assassin's Creed II

Assassin's Creed II is the John Wilkes Booth of assassin video games. Sure you've murdered your target, but you've also clumsily leapt off a banister (possibly cracking your leg in two) and you have half the goddamn country chasing you from Ford's Theatre. At its simple core, that is Assassin's Creed II's gameplay. To an onlooker, your actions make you look like a stumbling, blundering idiot. Is that what you signed up for when you decided to play a game called Assassin's Creed? Probably not, but that is the depth of gameplay experience that you'll take out of the franchises' latest iteration.  Sure, you'll visit an ambitiously recreated Italy, never seen in such splendor within a video game's context before.  But the story counteracts this design ambition.  Its writers force a story that is ultimately insulting to not only the player but in how it treats its protagonist, Ezio Auditore.  Why couldn't the story just take place in the world that was created? The one where I run and jump and exist?  While Assassin's Creed II is not a broken product by any means it is this culmination of narrative idiocy and dissatisfying gameplay that make it a coward in big budget gaming.

As the protagonist you are assigned numerous targets that must be assassinated. By definition this means the target would preferably be murdered by guile, stealth, or subterfuge. That is because in order for your line of work to be defined as assassin you must live to slay another day. In Assassin's Creed II you are only given the gameplay tools to be the most awkward of so-called assassins. You have no way to approach your target in stealth. You have no means to escape without being chased like a simple cutpurse. There is no way for you to plan your assassination! Booth at least had a getaway horse stashed away. While you play Assassin's Creed II, every one of your assassinations will play out like this: You scale the wall of the target's hiding place, you dash past the target's sentries (possibly slaying a few), and you run directly up to your target and engage in melee or maybe you'll get lucky and the game will allow you to perform an instant kill. While you fight your target to the death their guards have gathered around you like a bunch of thugs from Romeo Must Die. In order to complete your mission you must escape: so you either a) run away from the orgy you've assembled or b) just kill them all (without a firehose).

Which takes us to the other main area of gameplay: the combat. So you killed Count Douchebag and his bodyguard squadron has surrounded you. Even a novice player could kill more than ten men, easily. This is because more than one guard will rarely ever gang up on you and because you can counter nearly every attack. Counters are the crux of the sword play in Assassin's Creed II. When you counter an opponent's attack, you pay witness to a spectacular animation as you stab them in the throat, force their own rapier into their gut, or simply snatch their own blade from their hands and dice them to bits. But playing a game where the only way to kill your opponents is by countering their attacks is every bit as satisfying as beating a goon to death with a bulletproof jacket. The only times you actually land a strike on someone is if you walk up from behind an enemy and stick them with your hidden blades. That just sucks.

I have personally spent several months in Italy and have visited every city featured within the game or one of equal size and prestige. This game has create a facsimile of true life architecture that is unparalleled. Walking through the Piazza San Marco in Venice is breathtaking and inspiring. Climbing to the top of the duomo in Florence is simply stupefying. As you carouse the streets of Italy's Renaissance you realize that this is the home of Michaelangelo, Leonardo, the shit that romantic history is made of. But for all of the loving craftmanship that has gone into creating this world, it is squandered by being featured in an utterly dumb game. Its streets bustle with life and activity, but why the hell are you running along the rooftops? Because it looks cool, dude! Imagine if this world was implemented into a game that needed its lifelike appearances, such as an Elder Scrolls game. What does it matter if there are doctors, whores, and festivals lining the streets if you are going to spend the majority of your time traipsing around red-tiled rooftops?

Gameplay aside, Assassin's Creed II's true travesty is its storyline. The artists have constructed a realistic world in the same way Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven is realized. Utterly, historically real. The writers have created a great new protagonist role for you to fill, Ezio Auditore. He is a crafty, womanizing bastard with just enough smart ass in him that you like the son of a bitch. His tale is a simple one of revenge but goddamned if I don't think he's a great lead character. He walks the line between street ruffian and a slumming aristocrat with a backstory reminiscent of that classic Shakespearean feud between the Montagues and Capulets. However, you are periodically pulled from Ezio's story into a parallel storyline about Desmond Miles. Desmond is a worthless distraction. He has literally no backstory, no character, nothing worth mentioning except his crooked nose and that he's voiced by Nolan North. The fact that Desmond's story is the backbone of the Assassin's Creed franchise shows that the game's creators are utter cowards. Both ACI and ACII feature beautiful and breathtaking worlds that have never been featured in video games to such awe-inspiring detail before. The games are rife with historical data and show that its designers have spent plenty of time pouring over history books. But instead of simply featuring stories that only take place in the world's they have created they doubted themselves and created a bullshit Matrix rip-off with a Da Vinci Code flair. It is so dissatisfying to see Ezio's story stolen from him. By doing this, the story is telling you that all of your actions in the game are utterly for naught. What you've been doing has been pointless. Well, Assassin's Creed II, thanks for nothing! I feel bad for poor Ezio.

The icing on the cake is that the final battle of the game is so utterly dumb that once I finished it I felt embarrassed to be a gamer. Without spoiling this final battle I will create a suitable parallel. Let's say in Assassin's Creed 7 you play the role of a Civil War assassin, killing numerous Union Generals and Aristocrats. As you work your way up to the final chapter of the game you engage in your last encounter, a fist fight with Abe Lincoln himself! But Assassin's Creed II's finale is even worse. It is so, so dumb. Totally dumb. Man, it sucks to be Ezio. He needs a new agent.

I played Assassin's Creed II to 100% completion in under 17 hours. The fact that I completed the game says something to its inherent quality as an entertainment product. While the story is worthless in an artistic sense, its events compel you forward as a gamer. The scenes with Leonardo and his glider are quite fun and I really enjoyed the wagon chase half-way through the game. Ezio could've used many more diversions such as these but I guess rowing along in a gondola will have to do. While I think the verticality of the game is misplaced, climbing and swinging was incredibly fun for me within the Assassin's Tomb sections. These sections have you scaling around the inside of catacombs and basilicas in order to reach a hidden section where a famous assassin was entombed. It made me want some more scripted climbing sequences to be included in some of Ezio's assassinations.
 
Unlike John Wilkes Booth, Ezio might not have been shot while trying to escape a burning barn but even worse his existence was pretty much nullified within the context of the game's story. While it might be worth a weekend rental, I suggest you too forget Assassin's Creed II because damn, even a do-gooder like Batman makes for a better killer.